"He is just as good as ever, I suppose?" Blair said, and watched her delicate lip droop. "Better, if anything." And in the dusk, as they sauntered over the old bridge, she flung out gibe after gibe at her lover. Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter; it was like tearing her own flesh. The shame of it! The rapture of it! It hurt her so that the tears stood in her eyes; so she did it again, and yet again. "I don't pretend to live up to David," she said. Blair, with a laugh, confessed that he had long ago given up any such ambition himself. On the bridge they stopped, and Blair looked back at the town lying close to the water. In the evening dusk lights were pricking out all along the shore; the waste-lands beyond the furnaces were vague with night mists, faintly amethyst in the east, bronze and black over the city. Here and there in the brown distances flames would suddenly burst out from unseen stacks, then sink, and the shadows close again. "I wish I could paint it," Blair said dreamily; "Mercer from the bridge, at twilight, is really beautiful." "I like the bridge," Elizabeth said, "for sentimental reasons. (Now," she added to herself, "now, I am a bad woman; to speak of _that_ to another man is vile.) David and I," she said, significantly,--and laughed. Even Blair was startled at the crudeness of the allusion. "I didn't suppose David ever condescended to be spoony," he said, and at the same instant, to his absolute amazement, she caught his arm and pulled his hand from the railing. "Don't touch that place!" she cried; Blair, amused and cynical, laughed under his breath. "I see; this is the hallowed spot where you made our friend a happy man?" "We'll turn back now, please," Elizabeth said, suddenly trembling. She had reached the climax of her anger, and the reaction was like the shock of dropping from a dizzy height. During the walk home she scarcely spoke. When he left her at her uncle's door, she was almost rude. "Goodnight. No; I'm busy. I'd rather you didn't come in." In her own room, without waiting to take off her things, she ran to her desk; she did not even pause to sit down, but bent over, and wrote, sobbing under her breath: "DAVID: I am just as false as I can be. I ridiculed you to Blair. I lied and lied and lied--because I was angry. I hated you for a little while. I am low, and vulgar, and a blasphemer. _I told him about the bridge._ You see how vile I am? But don't--don't give me up, David. Only--understand just how base I am, and then, if you possibly can, keep on loving me. E. "P. S. I am not worth loving." * * * * * When David read that poor little letter, his face quivered for an instant, then he smiled. "Materna," he said--they were sitting at supper; "Materna, she certainly is perfect!" His mother laughed, and put out her hand. But he shook his head. "Not even you!" he said.